This study examines the relationship between culture, human health, and the environment in four communities in the Constanza Region of central Dominican Republic during a period between 1998 and 2002. The region is the center for temperate vegetable crop production in the country. Several of the valleys that compose the region are dominated by agribusiness farms, and a large number of farm worker families living in close proximity to pesticide sprayed fields.

By embracing methods emerging from anthropology, geography and epidemiology, I examine how the combination of biogeophysical processes, cultural (behavioral) patterns, and socioeconomic structures influence pesticide exposure. The multidisciplinary approach offered is holistic and complimentary, and allows for equal treatment of the exposed population and causing agents.

I wanted to understand (1) how location and meteorological factors influence pesticide exposure; (2) how commercial horticultural production, impair the health of community members by contaminating environmental resources (water, air and soil); (3) how community members, who have a very different worldview, understand the risks and implications of working and living with toxic agrochemicals; (4) how they integrate ideas about these chemicals into preexisting beliefs of health, illness and healing; (5) how they conceptualize symptoms associated with pesticide exposure and other health threats; (6) how they integrate supernatural (folk medicine) with biomedical alternatives for improving health and healing; (7) how they interpret symptoms associated with pesticide exposure and other health threats as caused by supernatural forces, and how these interpretations threaten their health by preventing or impeding proper and timely treatment; (8) how their behavior and activities serve as pesticide exposure pathways from work place and schools into the homes; and (9) how the agribusiness sector, via their manipulation of political-economic structures, maintain their control over environmental resources, community health, landuse, and agricultural production. The research does not offer magic formulas for achieving a healthy balance between environmental and community health, only sound recommendations for improving both.

The core of the study arose from research I conducted in 1993 on natural resource conservation in southeast Puerto Rico. During the data collection phase of that study, I traveled extensively throughout the island. This experience gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with the island’s environmental problems, especially those concerning landscape degradation and natural habitat destruction. Based on these experiences and concerns, the present research focuses on generating viable landscape restoration and conservation strategies for southeast Puerto Rico.